From early September, 1939 Halifax was at war. When the war began, people gathered along the waterfront to watch the fleet of the Royal Canadian Navy leave. For the next six years, the city was uniquely affected by the war's events. Halifax at War explores this transformation of the city and civilian life, making use of a rich blend of historical, …

In 1968, there was political ferment everywhere. In Paris, students were in the streets. In the U.S., civil rights, the Vietnam War, and protests against the draft brought out millions. In this atmosphere, a young Jewish-American professor in the quiet town of Fredericton, New Brunswick sparked a controversy that established the principles of acade …

For 100 years, Wood’s Homes has offered a lifeline to children and their families who have nowhere else to turn. A multiservice, non-profit children’s mental health organization based in Calgary, Wood’s Homes serves communities throughout Alberta and in the Northwest Territories. In honour of the 100th anniversary of Wood’s Homes in 2014, t …

Ontario is rich in ghost towns, communities that were once thriving but which have been reduced to mere shadows of their former selves. Nine villages -- including silver camps, fishing ports, crossroads hamlets, and farming settlements -- come alive on the pages of this book. The term 'ghost town' invariably conjures up images of fog-shrouded cemet …

In the early morning of August 19, 1942, over five thousand Canadian troops landed on the beach at Dieppe to reclaim the shore from German troops occupying France. It was a mission doomed from the start. Mere hours later, over two-thirds of the men were dead, wounded, or taken prisoner by German forces. It was the worst disaster in Canadian militar …

Heroes of the Acadian Resistance tells the unique and little-known story of the young men who led an Acadian resistance in 18th century Nova Scotia. They fought valiantly in a guerilla campaign against the British to save their homes and families from destruction and deportation.

Their battle was against a form of ethnic cleansing that saw British s …

On a warm spring day in June of 1914, two hundred and thirty-five men went down into the depths of the Hillcrest mine found in Alberta's Crowsnest Pass. Only forty-six would make it out alive. The largest coal-mining disaster in Canadian history, the fateful tale of the Hillcrest Mine is finally captured in startling detail by Stephen Hanon.

A deft …

Maryka Omatsu’s family was among those whose lives were shattered and properties taken by the Canadian government’s harsh and racist actions against Japanese Canadians during the Second World War. Bittersweet Passage is a moving account of the Japanese Canadian struggle to come to terms with a painful history. It is also the story of the author …

Stories of Indigenous children forced to attend residential schools have haunted Canadians in recent years. Yet most Indigenous children in Canada attended “Indian day schools,” and later public schools, near their home communities. Although church and government officials often kept detailed administrative records, we know little about the act …

In the 1940s it was unheard of for women to be members of a professional orchestra, let alone play “masculine” instruments like the bass or trombone. Yet despite these formidable challenges, the Montreal Women’s Symphony Orchestra (MWSO) became the only all-women orchestra in Canadian history. Formed in 1940, the MWSO became the first orchest …

Capitán de Navío Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra was the most important Spanish naval officer on the Northwest Coast in the eighteenth century. Serving from 1774 to 1794, he participated in the search for the Northwest Passage and, with George Vancouver, endeavoured to forge a diplomatic resolution to the Nootka Sound controversy between Spa …

Since 1970 in Quebec, there has been immense change for the Cree, who now live with the consequences of Quebec’s massive development of the North. Home Is the Hunter presents the historical, environmental, and cultural context from which this recent story grows. Hans Carlson shows how the Cree view their lands as their home, their garden, and the …

Throughout history, Western women have inhabited a conceptual space divorced from the world of business. But women have always engaged in business. Who were these women, and how were they able to justify their work outside the home? The Business of Women explores the world of those women who embraced British Columbia’s frontier ethos in the early …

Landing Native Fisheries reveals the contradictions and consequences of an Indian land policy premised on access to fish, on one hand, and a program of fisheries management intended to open the resource to newcomers, on the other. Beginning with the first treaties signed on Vancouver Island between 1850 and 1854, Douglas Harris maps the connections …

The Reluctant Land describes the evolving pattern of settlement and the changing relationships of people and land in Canada from the end of the fifteenth century to the Confederation years of the late 1860s and early 1870s. It shows how a deeply indigenous land was reconstituted in European terms, and, at the same time, how European ways were recal …

In 1988, after years of failed negotiations over the status of the Northwest Passage, Brian Mulroney gave Ronald Reagan a globe, pointed to the Arctic, and said “Ron that’s ours. We own it lock, stock, and icebergs.” A simple statement, it summed up a hundred years of official policy. Since the nineteenth century, Canadian governments have cl …

In early December 2006, a powerful windstorm ripped through Vancouver’s Stanley Park. The storm transformed the city’s most treasured landmark into a tangle of splintered trees and shattered a decades-old vision of the park as timeless virgin wilderness. In Inventing Stanley Park, Sean Kheraj traces how the tension between popular expectations …

Many Canadians believe their nation fell on the right side of history in harbouring black slaves from the United States. In fact, in the wake of the American Revolution, Loyalist families brought slaves with them to settle in the Maritime colonies of British North America.

The transition from slavery in the American colonies to slavery in the Marit …

Thousands of children attended summer camps in twentieth-century Ontario. Did parents simply want a break, or were broader developments at play? The Nurture of Nature explores how competing cultural tendencies – antimodern nostalgia and modern sensibilities about the landscape, child rearing, and identity – shaped the development of summer camp …

The lives of many lesbians prior to 1965 remain cloaked in mystery. Historians have turned the spotlight on upper-middle-class “romantic friends” and on working-class butch and femme women, but the lives of the lower-middle-class majority remain in the shadows. Awfully Devoted Women offers a portrait of middle-class lesbianism in the decades be …

Between 15,000 and 20,000 underage youths, some as young as ten, signed up to fight in Canada's armed forces in the First World War. They served in the trenches alongside their elders, and fought in all the major battles: Ypres, the Somme, Passchendaele, Vimy Ridge, and the rest. Many were injured or suffered psychological wounds. Many died. This i …

Suburb, Slum, Urban Village examines the relationship between image and reality for one city neighbourhood – Toronto’s Parkdale. Carolyn Whitzman tracks Parkdale’s story across three eras: its early decades as a politically independent suburb of the industrial city; its half-century of ostensible decline toward becoming a slum; and a post-ind …

Herbert Schulz gives us an inside''s account of the hardscrabble and often heartless prairie farm politics of the 1950s. The son of a CCF member, Schulz was an early organizer for the Manitoba Federation of Agriculture and later an executive in the Grandview Pool Elevator Association. His compelling memoir offers many humorous and poignant anecdote …

Failed or fragile states are those that are unable or unwilling to provide a socio-political framework for citizens and meet their basic needs. They are a source of terrorism and international crime, as well as incubators of infectious disease, environmental degradation, and unregulated mass migration. Canada's engagement with countries such as the …

Writing Geographical Exploration summarizes the various factors that influence the writing and interpretation of exploration narratives, demonstrating the limitations of the assumption that there is a direct relationship between what the explorer saw and what the text describes. Davies offers a revisionist evaluation of Captain Thomas James, who sp …

The Walrond Ranch, a cattle and horse operation in the foothills of southern Alberta, was one of the four giants of the livestock grazing industry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. At its height, the Walrond ran over 10,000 cattle along with several hundred well-bred Clydesdale and Shire horses on nearly 300,000 acres of land.

Ult …

For much of its 130-year history, the Bar U Ranch can claim to have been one of the most famous ranches in Canada. Its reputation is firmly based on the historical role that the ranch has played, its size and longevity, and its association with some of the remarkable people who have helped develop the cattle business and build the Canadian West. Th …

The Crowsnest Pass is famous for the tragic rock slide at Frank in 1903, but almost as famous are the many coal-mining tragedies that afflicted the region in the early twentieth century. With the discovery of a rich coal deposit in the region, the area underwent an economic boom and a spike in population that is still evidenced today. Unfortunately …

The stories told in this collection, though tragic for many, illustrate the steadfast determination and courage of people in the face of misfortune and extreme distress. From the lesser-known weed outbreaks and tornadoes to the world-wide influenza outbreak in 1918 that devastated many Calgary families, these stories focus on the human side of thes …

The Diplomacy of Impartiality is an analysis of a major decade in Canadian–Israeli relations, dealing with significant events that led to the Six-Day War of 1967 and its aftermath. Using primary documentation from the National Archives of Canada and the Israeli State Archives, Zachariah Kay shows that although Canada was committed to Israel’s e …

Racial Attitudes in English-Canadian Fiction is a critical overview of the appearances and consequences of racism in English-Canadian fiction published between 1905 and 1980.

Based on an analysis of traditional expressions in literature of group solidarity and resentment, the study screens English-Canadian novels for fictional representations of su …

The New Hamburg Pottery was one of the twelve potteries in Waterloo County, Ontario, during the last half of the nineteenth century. The works was a family-operated business during most of its history. It was owned by members of the Boehler family until 1894 then continued under a succession of owners until 1916. The pottery depended on a local sup …

W.E. Knowles Middleton, continuing his series of books on the history of the National Research Council of Canada, here presents a history of the challenges, defeats and triumphs of mechanical engineering at the Council. Throughout much of the history of the National Research Council, the Division of Mechanical Engineering has been mostly preoccupi …

The Governor-General of Canada was an influential political figure of major significance at the turn of the century. The Fourth Earl of Minto, who held this office from 1898 to 1904, is regarded by some Canadian historians as a romantic hero and by others as a bungling instrument of British imperialist designs. According to the author of this monog …

William V. Uttley's outline of Kitchener's growth from the 1840's into 20th century [is] shot through with a reassuring consistency and integration of purpose .... The complex of life as we still know it—social freedom and social restraint, economy and ecology—has its genesis here in the account compiled by William Uttley. His work comes as clo …

“In this book, Professor D.N. Sprague tells why the Métis did not receive the land that was supposed to be theirs under the Manitoba Act.... Sprague offers many examples of the methods used, such as legislation justifying the sale of the land allotted to Métis children without any of the safeguards ordinarily required in connection with transac …

“I am a girl, 13 years old, and a proper broncho buster. I can cook and do housework, but I just love to ride.”

In letters written to the children’s pages of newspapers, we hear the clear and authentic voices of real children who lived in rural Canada and Newfoundland between 1900 and 1920. Children tell us about their families, their schools …

Canada's Indian policy has, since the 1830s, consisted mainly of attempts at cultural replacement. Although rarely practised, cultural synthesis of native and western cultures has been advocated as an important alternative especially in the last ten years. This book is a study of E.F. Wilson (1844–1915), a Canadian missionary of British backgrou …

Allan Sullivan wrote over forty works of popular fiction between 1890 and 1940; today it is difficult to find even one copy of many of these works. A well-known and widely read author in the first half of this century, Sullivan wrote thrillers, historical romance, children's stories, and novels set in the north (The Great Divide, The Fur Masters, C …

In August 1914, Berlin, Ontario, settled largely by people of German origin, was a thriving, peaceful city. By the spring of 1915 it was a city torn apart by the tensions of war. By September 1916, Berlin had become Kitchener. It began with the need to raise a battalion of 1,100 men to support the British war effort.

Meeting with resistance from a …

During the years 1933 to 1939, a pro-Nazi movement developed in Canada. With the support of the German National Socialist Party, Canadian pro-Nazi institutions were formed: clubs, rallies, schools, and newspapers. The movement ended in failure. The author analyzes the reasons for the formation and decline of the National Socialist Party in Canada, …

This volume continues the story of teh National Research Council begun by Physics at the National Research Council of Canada (also written by Middleton) and Biological Sciences at the National Research Council of Canada (by N.T. Gridgeman). Technical enough to interest the scientifically informed reader, yet comprehensible to the general reader, t …

The text discusses the legacy of the Cold War in Canada by looking at Prime Minister Diefenbaker’s “Diefenbunkers”—eleven nuclear fallout shelters constructed in secret in the late 1950s to protect the Canadian national and provincial governments from a nuclear strike. While many of these sites have fallen into disrepair or been sold off, o …

The history of Kitchener is unique among cities in southern Ontario. Although Kitchener shares so much of the character of the region today, its past was considerably different. Until 1916, Kitchener was Berlin, “Canada’s German capital.” Over two-thirds of the residents were of German origin; many retained strong traces of that past. These b …

A transcription of Lucy Peel’s wonderfully readable journal was recently discovered in her descendent’s house in Norwich, England. Sent in regular installments to her transatlantic relatives, the journal presents an intimate narrative of Lucy’s Canadian sojourn with her husband, Edmund Peel, an officer on leave from the British navy. Her dail …

“So often a long-awaited book is disappointing. Happily such is not the case with Sutherland’s masterpiece.” Robert M. Stamp, University of Calgary, in The Canadian Historical Review

“Sutherland’s work is destined to be a landmark in Canadian history, both as a first in its particular field and as a standard reference text.” J. Stewart …

When most people think of the War of 1812, they think of the Niagara frontier, the British burning of the White House, the harrowing tale of Laura Secord, and the much-ballyhooed Battle of New Orleans. But there was more of British North America involved in the war than Upper and Lower Canada. With Great Britain locked in battle with Napoleon's Fra …

Adults need playgrounds. In 1907, the Canadian government designated a vast section of the Rocky Mountains as Jasper Forest Park. Tourists now play where Indigenous Peoples once lived, fur traders toiled, and Métis families homesteaded. In Culturing Wilderness in Jasper National Park, I.S. MacLaren and eight other writers unearth the largely unrec …